Gun sales surge as Obama talks tough

Gun sales in the US are up as consumers anticipate reforms in the wake of the killings in Newtown, Connecticut.
Photo: Reuters

by
Matt Townsend

With President
Barack Obama
endorsing sweeping gun restrictions following the school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut, prices for handgun magazines are surging on eBay and semi-automatic rifles have sold out at many Walmart stores.

Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, has said it would continue to sell guns, including rifles like the one used at Newtown, where 26 people, most of them children, were killed on December 14. By contrast, Dick’s Sporting Goods suspended sales of similar guns at its more than 500 stores.

Searches of five kinds of semi-automatic rifles on Walmart’s website showed them to be out of stock at stores in five states, including Pennsylvania, Kansas and Alabama. Walmart has about 10 modern sporting rifles, the gun industry’s term for firearms that look like an M-16 military rifle, listed on its website. The retailer removed a description and picture of the Bushmaster AR-15, the model used in Newtown, after the shootings.

Walmart does not disclose how many guns it sells, although at an analysts’ meeting in October it said gun revenue rose 76 per cent in the first half of this fiscal year. The chain advertised a Sig Sauer M400 as one of its Black Friday doorbusters last month, offering the rifle for $US50 off, at $US867.

On eBay’s auction site, shoppers have recently bid up gun magazines. The current bid for four Glock handgun magazines, ammunition for one of the guns used at Newtown, is $US118.37, compared with $US45 on the day before the shooting. The bid for seven Glock magazines hit $US201 on December 17, up from $US71.01 before the massacre.

Gun buyers have flooded other firearms retailers, too. The Hyatt Gun Shop in Charlotte, North Carolina, racked up more than $US1 million in sales on Tuesday for the best single-day performance since the store opened in 1959, according to Justin Anderson, director of online sales.

At the top of shoppers’ lists was the Bushmaster AR-15, the model of rifle used at Newtown that sells for as much as $US4000 and had almost sold out, he said.

Revenue at one of the largest US gun stores surpassed even the spike just after Mr Obama was elected President in 2008, Mr Anderson said. Sales were not as robust when Obama was re-elected last month because the President had not backed major new gun laws, he said.